


Analogue

by Enchantable



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Major Character Injury, Morse Code, Post-Canon, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-28
Updated: 2013-08-28
Packaged: 2017-12-24 22:30:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/945396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enchantable/pseuds/Enchantable
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not uncommon for co-pilots to be put in the same infirmary room. Unfortunately there's usually a blue curtain in between. Mako and Raleigh have to get a little creative when it comes to communication.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Analogue

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Mako and Raleigh fluff, BUT without them touching or having any sex, showing their distance together.

He comes to with a groan.

It’s muffled by the oxygen mask on his face.

He blinks the tears from his eyes and takes in the lights of the infirmary. His mouth is paper dry but it feels like his arms are weighed down with lead. He flexes his fingers underneath his sheet and bites back a curse when he finds his right hand is tightly bound.

His left was the same back when Yancy died.

The panic blossoms in his chest. He hates hospitals for a good reason. His eyes lock shut as he fights the panic. Drift partners are put together in one room with a curtain between their bed. Doctors have never figured out why but being near each other helps with the healing. The last time he came to in a hospital his left arm was bound and that blue curtain was there and he got thirty seconds of stupid hope before it was pulled back and the other bed was empty.

He remembers her pulling him to her, begging him not to go but his mind’s a twisted thing. He remembers Yancy popping up in the water too, laughing about Kaiju and calling Knifehead an ugly son of a bitch. He hears the heart monitor beep louder as his pulse races. His fingers press in to his chest as the bandages go from tight to constriction. Logically he knows he’s not tied down, that the doctors aren’t pressing him to the bed and sedating him because he’s screaming again and again and again. Screaming for the hole in his soul and the brother who will never be able to hear again.

He never knows how he hears the tap on the opposite bed.

His eyes fly open as he chokes out a breath and then loses all the air in his lungs and sucks it in with a gasp. The heart monitor is going wild and the taping comes again. His eyes drag over to the direction of the tap. It happens again. Two quick taps that are unmistakable. After a beat they come again. He takes another breath and listens as the taps come again. Slow and steady, like a pulse.

They drag underneath his panic and he forces himself to breathe normally, to try and be as steady as the taps on the other bed. The heart monitor slows in his ears as she taps out a steady beat in his ears. She gives him something to focus on. He closes his eyes and takes the lifeline, letting it swell through his ears and ground him against the panic that still stabs in his gut. Even after the pulse monitor registers a steady beat, she keeps it up.

It takes everything for him to flex his fingers. Tech’s grown in leaps and bounds but there’s still a cap on his finger. He’s got a feeling that’s how she’s making the sound. He fights to raise his hand up and wrap it around the rail of the bed. Raising his finger he taps on the bed, not the random taps she’s doing but the taps they’re required to learn in the academy. The drugs make it difficult to think but it’s so ingrained in him he just focuses on tapping out the right message.

_Thanks. Are you okay?_

Her steady tapping stops and a moment later she taps her own message back.

_Yes. All my injuries are minor. I didn’t lose consciousness._

He sighs in relief and then nearly smiles from behind the mask because he can practically feel the sharp disapproval in Mako’s mind at him injuring himself even partially to protect her.

_That’s good. How long was I out?_

He’s honestly not sure he wants to know but asks anyway.

_It’s been forty eight hours since we were brought in. You lost consciousness on the flight over._

He vaguely remembers that. He remembers getting in to the chopper with Mako, adrenaline and elation making it hard to focus on anything except the warm weight of her tucked in to his side. He remembers the tingling in his arm and the odd thought that moving his other arm shouldn’t be so hard. And then it all kind of goes blank. He can feel the echo of it in her head, the stabbing panic as he sagged against her and the way her first shout for the medic came out in Japanese instead of English.

_Sorry for worrying you._

He taps out the message and wishes that he could move. He at least wants to see her even though he imagines that touching anyone is going to be difficult for a while. He adjusts his hand on the railing as he waits for the reply.

_You owe me your dessert for a week._

That actually makes him laugh which immediately makes him wince. He wants to tell her that she can have his dessert for longer than a week. LIke for years and years and years, for as long as she wants it. As long as its chocolate because Mako doesn’t touch anything else. Not the fake cheese cake Herc weirdly likes or that mock up apple pie he does. None of them touch the blue jello though. He taps his message back.

_Deal. I’d start now but there’s no food._

He can practically hear her thoughts go dark and mentally swears. He takes a deep breath because he knows exactly what that silence means. His mind’s coming back on line but there’s still a thick cloud around his thoughts. That kind of cloud that comes with anesthetic. He thinks of Mako in the room. She knows his panic at the blue curtain, as intimately as if it was her own. Except she would know that the other side was empty.

_Unless you want ice chips, but they aren’t chocolate_

Her reply comes instantly.

_I’ll pass_

He smiles at that.

_That hurts._

Mako laughs and he can hear it just faintly, but he doesn’t know if it’s in his head or in his ears and he can feel himself getting sleepier. His fingers tighten on the bar as he flexes his others in their tight bandages.

_What about everything else?_

He considers the question with a mind made lose from drugs and sleepiness. Or maybe that’s the drugs. He isn’t really sure. He can feel all his old wounds and his new ones on top of those. He’s got a feeling his chest and arms are going to be closer to matching now. Old man Pentecost is with Yancy now. Second chances are going to come harder than before. But he’s drifted again and his drift partner is alive and echoing in his head and for the first time in a long time it feels like he’s got something to hold on to when the dark thoughts claw at him.

_It’s not too bad_


End file.
